The SQL Nexus set of utilities are some of the most under utilized tools available to the SQL Server community. I used and touted the RML utility for many years to help people analyze trace information very fast and easily. Eventually XE traces Read More...

The new Query Store feature in SQL Server 2016 is a great new addition that we have been anticipating for many years now. There are already a bunch of articles out there that explain what it is even how to go about using it so I won’t repeat that here. Read More...

Many of us have used the free version of Plan Explorer from SQLSentry for a long time to help tune and explore query plans in a way that SSMS can only dream of. Unlike most free tools this one still had plenty of useful features that served the community Read More...

For many years I have been using a set of stored procedures to capture and report on both the file and wait statistics inside of SQL Server and I just recently did some more modifications that I wanted to make available. Since many of you have received Read More...

Please note that I have a newer version of these procedures that you can find here http://sqlblog.com/blogs/andrew_kelly/archive/2015/09/02/revised-file-wait-statistics-procedures.aspx . For many years I have been using a set of stored procedures to capture Read More...

If you are in the area I will be speaking at the Triangle SQL Server Users Group meeting on Tuesday the 20th of September 2011. The session is on TempDB Best Practices and all of the details for the topic, directions etc. can be found here . Read More...

I will be giving a presentation in between Earthquakes and Hurricanes in Charlotte NC. this Wednesday the 31st of August on Understanding Indexes in SQL Server 2008 . If you are in the area please drop by and say hello. You can find out more information Read More...

My next performance class will be in San Francisco, CA on May 9th thru the 11th. I haven’t been to San Francisco in about 10 years and I am looking forward to getting back there. The material is a bit refined over the first class and I added a Read More...

For any of you who may be interested or know of someone in the market for a performance Monitoring and Tuning class I have just the ticket for you. It’s a 3 day event that will be held in Atlanta Ga. on January 25th to the 27th 2011. For those Read More...

I just ran across what I think is a newly published white paper on parallel processing in SQL Server 2008 R2. The date is October 2010 but this is the first time I have seen it so I am not 100% sure how new it really is. Maybe you have seen Read More...

The SQL Server support team just announced the release of a backup simulator. Many 3rd party utilities that do backup like IBM Tivoli, Symantec BackupExec, Quest Litespeed, Redgate SQL Backup etc. use the sqlvdi.dll to communicate to SQL Server and this Read More...

Just a heads up to those in the area that I will be speaking at the (TriPASS) Raleigh SQL Server user group on the 15th of June 2010. The topic is Storage & I/O Best Practices. The abstract is listed below: SQL Server relies heavily on a well configured Read More...

On June 29th 2010 I will be showing several sessions related to performance tuning for SQL Server and they are the best kind because they are free :). So mark your calendars. Here is the event info and URL: June 29, 2010 - 10:00 am - 3:00 pm Eastern SQL Read More...

As many of you heard ( see Kevin’s post http://sqlblog.com/blogs/kevin_kline/archive/2009/05/06/microsoft-marketing-throws-sql-server-under-the-bus.aspx ) MS marketing released a comment last week that indicated SQL Server couldn’t handle the load Read More...

I will be the 1st to admit that I am no Itzik Ben-Gan when it comes to writing complex SQL statements and I wonder at times how people come up with some of the Selects that I see. Sometimes they are so complex or convoluted that I simply have a Read More...